SPEECH BY EBRAHIM RASOOL, ANC WESTERN CAPE LEADER AND LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE
Issued by: ANC Western Cape
19 September 2000
Mr Speaker
This morning I received a faxed letter to my office from someone calling him/herself "Anti-Pagad Muslim" and who indicates that he/she had sent this letter to the newspapers but that it had not been published.
I would like to share the contents of this letter with the House today.
[READ OUT LETTER IN THE HOUSE]
The people of our Province are feeling insecure - from the office of the Premier to the least amongst us. What our Province and our country wants from us is a sense that the organs of the state are mobilised, are working, and are on the trail of these terrorists. What they don't want from us is a sense of discord, distrust and aimlessness.
I believe our people are mature enough to understand that it is never easy to catch these terrorists. But they need to know that we are trying to catch them.
Our people will understand that it takes painstaking work to find and convict such terrorists. But they need to see a harmony which defines the relationship between the different levels of government and the different organs of the state.
In short, our people need to trust us, at a time when they feel most vulnerable. This is not a time when we should betray that trust with inconsistencies in our behaviour and utterances.
It would be the easiest thing to beat the drums which proclaim that our government and our country are hostile to Muslims. Two months before an election it would even be tempting to capture this sentiment and turn it into votes. But it would be a fundamentally untrue sentiment.
The Minister of Safety and Security, Mr Steve Tshwete, is often quoted as fuelling this sentiment by describing PAGAD as `Islamic Fundamentalists'. I believe the Minister has gone much further than this simple description. The Minister, in fact, is on record as saying: "Pagad is a group of terrorists, using Islam as a front for their cowardly activities, and bringing the name of a great religion into disrepute." I would go further and say that this country has been appreciative of its Muslim community in ways which observers from other Muslim countries find astonishing, given the small size of the Muslim community. Muslims are well-represented both in parliament and cabinet; freedom of religion reigns; until his sad death, the Chief Justice of SA was a Muslim; today the Auditor-General is a Muslim; parliament will soon consider giving effect to Muslim Personal Law, and even the ruling party in this country - the ANC - received more votes from Muslims than any other party, including the Muslim Party.
If anyone believes that this country treats Muslims differently, let alone unfairly, then consider the two contrasting judgements issued yesterday by our judiciary.
In Rustenburg (in the North West Province) two rightwingers were found guilty of bombing a mosque. Together, the two rightwingers received a sentence equalling 54 years in jail. In Cape Town, two PAGAD members were convicted of killing seven old Chrystal Abrahams of Ocean View. Together the two will serve 6 years of Community Service outside of jail. Is this a country hostile to Muslims? I also ask the DA, and especially the Premier and Minister Bester, to quell the whisper by their over-eager foot soldiers that the ANC is actually responsible for urban terror in this Province, unless, of course, you believe this to be true. It is then expected that you state this openly.
The rumour goes something like this: the ANC doesn't rule the Western Cape, it wants to destabilise the Province in order to gain power, hence it bombs the Province.
Besides the fact that it is a fallacious and dangerous argument, it is also one which, through its demand for a response from the ANC, can communicate a message to an insecure and fearful community, that we are not united in our fight against urban terror.
If that is the message we communicate, then we send out a signal to our people that they may as well fall into despair because they cannot trust their political leaders to unite, even around such a grave threat.
More dangerously, we send a signal to the perpetrators that they have the ability to divide us, exploit our differences and undermine our resolve to deal with them uncompromisingly.
An encouraging trend emerged out of the taxi conflict.
Intelligence agents - old and new - combined under a collective leadership -national and provincial - to deliver a stunning victory to all political !parties and organs of the state - intelligence, police and judiciary.
This is the only way forward. No gain can be had by any party riding the tiger of opportunism. All of us will be the losers.
Tourism and investment will remain the losers. Growth and Redistribution will be the losers.
Let's not ride the tiger. Let's confront it.
ISSUED BY ANC WESTERN CAPE COMMUNICATIONS
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